


Life and Other Terminal Diseases

by manic_intent



Category: Skyfall (2012) - Fandom
Genre: Biting, James is maudlin at the best of times, M/M, Marking, Rough Sex, Stubbornness
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-12-21
Updated: 2012-12-21
Packaged: 2017-11-21 22:23:47
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,094
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/602719
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/manic_intent/pseuds/manic_intent
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Written for various prompts, including: "Watching 007 is a necessary part of The Plan. Silva's growing obsession with him, however, is accidental."</p>
            </blockquote>





	Life and Other Terminal Diseases

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks to everyone who sent me prompts! I suppose a problem with secret prompts is that people's prompts would overlap XD;; This fic covers theagentofshield, ragenserenity and antiheroical, tweaked to fit:
> 
> 1\. theagentofshield: What if Bond had taken Silva up on his offer and they worked together?  
> 2\. ragenserenity: she never tied me to a chair  
> 3\. antiheroical: Watching 007 is a necessary part of The Plan. Silva's growing obsession with him, however, is accidental.

I.

Waking up alive had come as somewhat of a rude shock to James, but in a way, the broken, patchwork process of recovery was worse.

The first time he had picked up a gun, two weeks after, he'd thrown it across the room in a fit of rage when he had seen the tremble in his hands, and dazed on horrific whisky and high on painkillers, he'd taken home the first girl who approached him at a bar, fucked her until the bed shook the wall and she'd screamed herself hoarse. Bitterness cemented the ugly recourse into routine, and James watched it etch its toll over his face and the set of his shoulders, pull his mouth into a flat line, like the edge of a sneer. 

There was no real point in going back to London, he knew that much, no point in trying. The shot that had punched through him had left fragments and infection in its wake, and that, more than the initial trauma, had broken him down, recast the weapon that his body had been into something useless for his trade.

Better that he stayed dead, then. James knew the drill for any 00 returning from a mission, let alone one rising seemingly out of death's clutches; those tests that he'd always breezed through, that he'd never had to take seriously, would now ruin him. 

When he wasn't drinking or gambling or tumbling women he walked along Koca Calis, barefoot, the warm sand trickling between his toes, the sun burning his skin a slow and awful shade of brown. He had thought that he would be bored, but James found himself numb, instead, in as much of a daze out of the drugs and drink as he was within it, and the days passed with little notice - at least until he saw the other hunter on the beach. 

Even a touristy destination like Fethiye wasn't without the occasional visitor that set off faint alarms in James' instincts: off-duty security, or police, or the occasional Grey Wolf, but this one was different, familiar in all the ways he had learned to recognise. Just as he had once picked Leiter out of a crowded casino in Montenegro, James registered the newcomer's unhurried, economic grace, the careful cut of his clothes that would easily conceal a knife, a pistol, or both, the way the stranger observed the sheep around him with only a predator's curiosity. 

Another operative, then. Possibly on holiday, possibly not. The stranger looked as though he was about James' age, at the least, or older; with his neat walnut hair and the bronze of his skin he could possibly pass as a native, but by the set of his mouth and his frame James' training placed him with Spanish blood. From the CNI, perhaps? It seemed possible, but unlikely. The CNI had never shown much interest in MI6 or its dealings, but then again, perhaps it too had a stake in the list of names that had been stolen.

James tried to ignore the possible CNI agent for a few days, but on the fourth, he gave in to his curiosity, padding over to the stranger's side, settling into the empty deck chair beside him. The stranger glanced at him, his smile sharp, not particularly friendly nor hostile, his dark eyes widening a little, as if in amusement. He held a book in his hands, English, by the looks of it, and fiction, with dense, thick paragraphs, though James couldn't pick out the title. He was visibly unarmed, dressed in a thin white collared shirt and khaki pants, but James knew that there was, at least, a knife strapped somewhere over the man's calf, and probably a gun, hidden under the loose shirt. 

" _Buenos días_ ," James began mildly. 

" _Buenos días_ ," the stranger echoed, in a drawl, in perfect Spanish, " _¿Cómo está?_ "

" _Muy bien, gracias_ ," James replied shortly. "Are you from the CNI?"

The stranger's laughter was a sharp, harsh bark, an expulsion of amused contempt. "No. But," he added, and there was a lilting accent to his tone, almost exotic, "You are almost right. I was once like you, James."

James quietly flattened his feet against the ground, in case he had to move quickly, but he schooled his face the way training had taught him. "You have the advantage of me, Mister...?"

"Silva," the stranger said, as an afterthought, and extended a palm, his handshake cool, precise. "But please, call me Raoul."

Definitely a fake name, James felt, watching Silva's eyes as he spoke, at the dark humour that pulled his sharp smile upwards. Definitely dangerous. He could feel his curiosity stirring further, where it had been numbed and drowned before in drugs and alcohol, and wasn't sure if he liked it. Retirement was meant to be quiet, and Silva's cruel smile was rife with the promise of mayhem.

"Here on holiday?”

“Eh,” Silva looked him over, slow and lazy and thoughtful, then glanced back over at the sea, “I can be.” 

James knew better than to take the invitation at face value. Assuming Silva was speaking the truth - and his instincts said that he was - then he probably belonged to private security at best, or had turned and was working for a terrorist organisation at worst. He doubted the latter, somehow - if Silva had wanted to kill him, he probably could have done that easily. The drugs and the alcohol pushed James’ instincts off-balance, sluggish; he wouldn’t have fought off an assassination attempt easily-

A touch on his knee made him glance up sharply, and Silva eyed him with open amusement before noting, dryly, “I’m not here to kill you, James.” 

“Not yet,” James guessed, trusting to his gut, and Silva chuckled, low and dark and soft.

“Maybe. Maybe not yet. Maybe never. It depends.”

“On?”

“On how... ‘retired’ you feel, Commander.” 

“I’m enjoying death,” James returned flatly.

“No, you’re not,” Silva retorted, if with a touch of mock sadness. “You’re marinating here in cheap painkillers and even cheaper whisky. You’re not enjoying yourself. You’re merely...” His wrist lifted, in a lazy twist of dismissal, “Existing. You are just existing. Tch. It is a waste.”

“Then what do you propose?” James asked, warily. “I’m not looking for a new job.”

“I am not offering employment.”

“Then what are you offering?”

“I haven’t decided,” Silva said blithely, and he smiled his too-wide, knife-sharp smile. “But I am having a think about it.”

“What makes you think that I’ll be interested in whatever it is?”

“The bullet might have taken your aim, your precision, your sense of duty,” Silva pressed a rough, callused thumb over the knob of bone on James’ right wrist, curling the touch up, to his knuckles, uncomfortably intimate and sensuous, “But it hasn’t taken that lovely curiosity, or you would not have approached me.” 

“I’ve no interest in betraying my country,” James noted, jerking his hand away, and this time, Silva’s bark of laughter was mocking, almost bitter, and at the flavour of it, James tried another guess, a longer shot, this time. At least the hollow point bullet hadn't damaged his instincts, so far. “You’re ex-MI6.”

“Very, very, _very_ good,” Silva purred, sitting back, as though with arch surprise. “Oh, Mister _Bond_. You don’t disappoint. Even as you are now.”

“What are you doing here?” James asked warily.

“You’re not the first agent She has sent to his grave, James. I too, am enjoying death. As much as I can. While you,” the touch on his hand moved back to his wrist, to the soft, sensitive flesh under his palm, “Need to decide whether to drown yourself or swim back up.”

This time, James couldn't pull away, or wouldn't; the blood felt loud in his ears as he forced himself to meet the other hunter's eyes, to look into the mischief and the madness within it, and he grit his teeth, forced out a high, harsh breath, startled from the violence that answered within him, as the beast stirred, finally, after weeks of drowning in pain. 

Silva hummed, and squeezed his palm lightly, with a terrible, tender gentleness, and drew his hand away, pushing himself to his feet, padding away over the sand. The madness of it all seemed to draw away in his wake, and James breathed out, all in a rush, suddenly drained.

1.0.

Silva - and he was Silva now, wasn't he, more Silva than a Tiago and more Silva than the number-designate he had been - took his time in the shower, humming a snatch of melody he had caught from the beach under his breath. If he concentrated, he would remember the words - a perk of MI6 memory training, perhaps. Water calmed him, made him sleepy, and sometimes Silva thought of walking into the ocean, walking until he was floating and then sinking, the water would be cold at first, then warm, then nothing.

It was one of his gentler thoughts. 

He turned off the water when he finished the song, drying himself off with rote efficiency, then padding over to the sink, glancing into the mirror and curling a finger under the sagging skin under his eyes. It seemed fitting, this disfigurement, as horrific as it was. Who he had once been had died, and the remainder was a ghost animating the shell of a dead man; the skin hung from melted bone like a broken marionette.

Sterilizing the face plate in its chemical solution, Silva fit it into his mouth with the precision of practice, watching as it folded his face back into shape, like the final steps of a sculpture, moulding his frame into something visibly human. The marionette was reformed again, and he flexed his fingers, wiping the bath steam from the mirror, studying himself with a shadow of self-deprecating vanity. 

He'd have to dye his hair again soon, after Istanbul, probably. He didn't like having his natural earth brown; it made him look a touch far too much like the man whose ghost he was now. Superstition, perhaps, or more vanity, another lingering trace of his former self. He wasn't Tiago any longer. It was just a pity that bottle blonde hair stood out so much in Fethiye. 

Still, it wasn't as though his prey had failed to notice him regardless. Commander Bond had been impressive, after all, even in that broken down body of his; he'd guessed both at what Silva was and who he used to be. And the monster inside Bond had merely been sleeping, it seemed, not strangled; Silva had felt something wake behind those lovely ice blue eyes, something familiar, something that looked back out at him whenever he glanced at his own reflection.

Curious, curious.

Padding out into his hotel room in the Gocek, Silva picked through his travel bag at the foot of the bed, retrieving the silver box within it, and lining out, on the table, a multi-coloured cocktail of pills. Pouring himself water from the bar, he washed them down, then hooked himself up to the nutrient drip, no longer registering even the sting in his arm.

Back to business. Unlocking the titanium case on the desk with a thumbprint scan, Silva logged in to his laptop, checked his email, then occupied himself with the intricacies of worming his way into the FAID network, spreading a little chaos as he went, edging in a little misinformation here, some routine tricks there. The client had paid well and high, and tomorrow, a banker with rather regrettable political ambitions would find himself a fugitive with no money or funds to go.

Ruining just one man was a little boring, but work was work, and Silva supposed that the new security measures in the FAID network were entertaining. Practice, at least. He'd heard that MI6 had been courting new talent, on the cyber warfare front. It wouldn't hurt to get familiar with new measures. 

And at least it took his mind off the Commander for a while. 

Silva wasn't a stranger to obsession, and it did have its uses - and its dangers. He was getting distracted by a cog in the game, and that wouldn't do, no, not at all. He knew he should leave Fethiye, let one of his minions deal with Bond's surveillance instead, but Silva had to admit that he was being… entertained. He'd forgotten how fun basic field work could be. Above the long periods of boredom and the occasional stint of drudgery, there was always that thrill that struck through him, whenever he looked into the eyes of his prey. 

Better still, when his prey stared right back at him and challenged him.

Ah well, he'd kept assiduously to his Plan to date, and it wasn't as though Mummy was going anywhere, not for months, maybe not for years. With the list in his hands, the ball was in his court. Silva had time to play, and he _had_ been working so very hard.

II.

Silva was sitting at the exact same spot on the beach again, this time reading a copy of the local paper, and instead of heading to the bar, James found himself padding up to sit down by the empty deck chair beside him, yet again.

" _Buenos días_ ," Silva drawled, when James settled down.

"Hello," James replied tersely, and Silva smirked at him, but said nothing, the paper rustling as he turned a page. James caught the brief flash of a headline, something about a scandal in France, money and sex and politics - his Arabic was a little shaky - and he folded his hands over his belly, watching the ebb of the sea. 

They sat in silence, while behind them the sheep milled and played at ball games and other trivial pursuits, and of all things, James felt hungry again, anticipatory, as though caught up in the quiet tension before a bloodletting. It seemed as though they were circling each other, somehow, without even moving, sizing each other up, as though deciding whether or not to tear each other to pieces or strike against everything else.

If James had to admit it, this sensation was what the deep core of him lived for, this buzzing maddening thrill, the adrenaline spike that drugs could never buy him, the rush of absolute clarity that dragged life itself into full focus. He had been trained well, he knew, for the job to define him so, but he'd never had this sensation of freefall before outside of a designated task. It was unsettling. 

Exhilarating. 

Silva wore danger and his madness openly. Objectively, James knew that operatives who fell into the state that Silva was in had to be put down, but he couldn't contemplate it, at least, not yet. Maybe it was his current fragmenting state of mind, or the lack of an official kill order; he wasn't sure. And he didn't _care_ , he realized fiercely. Perhaps this was freedom.

Eventually, Silva folded up his newspaper and rose from the chair to go, and James curled his fingers into the armrests, letting out a breath. Silva inclined his head at him, in amused farewell, padding away out into the sand, and James choked down a slow breath as his instincts screamed at him to get up and follow Silva's shadow. 

This continued for almost a week, and James was as sober as he had ever been; he hadn't stepped foot in the bar, hadn't brought anyone to the hut that he had rented. The inevitability of it all seemed frustrating sometimes, but James was used to frustration, and the beast within it was waiting for the last of his training to give out and give in.

Perhaps it was fitting, somehow, that on the seventh day, when Silva got to his feet, James finally pushed himself up from the chair, drawing level beside him in a few strides. They hadn't exchanged any more than a few words of polite greeting all week, and, unsettlingly, it still seemed as though James had known Silva forever.

Maybe he had.

Silva didn't acknowledge his presence, up until he reached his car, a suitably flamboyant yellow Lamborghini Reventon idling dangerously by itself at the sidewalk. Nobody seemed visibly interested in it, which told James clearly enough that Silva was not alone, that this was ill-advised, especially since he was unarmed.

He arched an eyebrow when Silva circled over to the passenger seat and strapped himself in, then James shook his head and let himself into the driver's seat, stroking his hand over the leather wheel. He caught the keys by reflex when Silva tossed them over.

"Where to?" James drawled.

"Anywhere. Take us for a spin."

The engine rumbled, then roared under his touch, and the rush of acceleration punched James back against the seat as they tore out of the parking lot, whirling dangerously close to a hastily swerving truck. Beside him, out of the corner of his eye, Silva smiled, baring his teeth, but didn't say anything as James drove them out into the street at a tyre-scorching speed. No cops materialized, not even when James decided to disregard traffic lights or rights of way, and this was the best thing next to flight, the best thing next to bloodletting.

Fethiye didn't take too long to circle, but the landscape didn't matter; Silva had his chin propped against his palm, watching the city tear past the window, his eyes distant, the predator within him dormant. This didn't seem important at first, and then it was, unsettlingly, and eventually, James exhaled, spinning the car into a perfect parallel park in a quiet residential street.

Silva blinked at him when James slid a palm over his thigh, then he frowned a little when James undid the seatbelt and prowled onto his lap, though he opened his mouth quickly enough when James licked against it. Silva's mouth tasted uncomfortably of disinfectant, sterile, and there was an unyielding, artificial texture to his lower jaw that felt and tasted like hardened plastic.

Startled, James jerked back, nearly barking his skull on the low ceiling of the Lamborghini, and found Silva watching him, again with that sharp, cruel smile, the mayhem front and foremost in his eyes. 

"Not all our scars are visible," Silva said finally, his hands still loose by his sides, then he blinked owlishly when James snorted and leaned back down, his legs awkward in the tight fit between the dashboard and the seat, his kiss hungrier, harder, until he felt long fingers curl up over his ribs, the right hand sweeping down, the press inexorable, stopping just over the best spot for a dagger to angle up past the cage of bone and pressing down firmly.

It was a truce, of sorts.

2.0.

The Plan wasn't going as it was meant to, and this divergence was dangerous.

James had reacted to Silva's attempts to manoeuvre them both onto the bed in the hotel room by biting him on the shoulder, then higher up, under his jaw, where the damage would be visible, and when Silva growled and shoved him, they'd ended up on the plush bed in a tangle of teeth and wrestling limbs and lust. 

Silva had managed to roll on top, maybe because James let him, maybe not, a little breathless, growling and trying to concentrate on what was left of James' clothes; shoes and belts and socks seemed such a waste of time, especially since James was being entirely unhelpful. Instead of obliging with Silva's clothes in turn, James had merely worked out the belt buckle, and had pushed a hand greedily past the hem of Silva's pants and boxers, curling his clever fingers around Silva's definitely swelling cock and squeezing.

" _James_ ," Silva growled, as James mouthed wetly over his neck, and got only a lazy, filthy smile of challenge in return as James deliberately spread his legs. _Oh_. Silva was going to ruin James every way that he could. Tie him down, perhaps, to a chair, or the bed, take his time, make him scream.

Foreplay seemed irrelevant when they had been circling each other for days, sniffing at the violence in each other's souls, but going to all the trouble of ensuring that James was prepped and clean was going to take too much time; despite the growl and the annoyed nip against his throat Silva settled for spit on his palm and lining their cocks together, slick and gritty.

James bucked, his gorgeous blue eyes unfocused, teeth bared, his gun hand clenched over Silva's shoulder and the other clawed in the sheets, and they thrust against each other, panting, gasping, their breaths in snatches of invective and lust, Silva's hand barely curled around both of their cocks. James came first, at least, with a jerk and a loud, keening moan; Silva set his knees against narrow hips and bit down again, close to the lovely thudding pulse at James' jugular, and spilled thickly and wetly over the mess on James' belly, dizzy with pain and with want. 

His body was starting to burn with agony even from this slight exertion, but dazed as he felt, as vulnerable as Silva knew this made him, he still managed a laugh and a moan when James drew his long fingers through the sticky mess and absently lapped the digits clean, tasting them both, his gaze unfocused, dreaming. 

Afterwards, when he'd cleaned them up, James watched him with a predator's idle curiosity from the furled nest he had made of the sheets and covers as Silva swallowed down his usual line of pills and pushed the drip into his arm. As the pain began to ebb, Silva tipped up his laptop, with only a brief backward glance.

"Hydrogen cyanide blend," Silva explained curtly, as he logged in and checked his email. "The pill in the molar. It didn't kill me. But it left its mark." He gestured languidly at the drip. "Much of my digestive system has been substantially damaged. The doctors repaired what they could, but I can't eat, or drink." 

He didn't add that he was often in pain, especially if he pushed himself; if James couldn't see that much from the lines of his body, then he was no shade of hunter at all.

James huffed, settling deeper into the sheets, and after Silva had finished replying to a few emails, sending out one in Japanese, and another in Russian, he added, idly, "We're hard to kill."

"Mm." Silva checked his bank account, and was preparing to hack into the ASX to make a few tweaks when warm hands slipped over his bared shoulders, over the ugly ridges of scar tissue from a bad stitch job in Sujiatun, held down as one of the camp hacks had threaded the gash roughly closed without bothering to thoroughly clean it. A chin pressed over his skull, interrupting the pleasant ambit of violence in the back of his mind, and Silva's fingers hesitated over the keyboard.

"What are you doing?" James murmured, as though he hadn't already memorized all the lines of code that he had seen. MI6 taught its killers well.

"Working." There wasn't really a point in hiding it, Silva decided, and besides, he was curious to know how James would react. 

"You're a hacker," James observed, after a moment's pause, even as his hands trailed down to the next bad stitch job, and the next, his fingers careful over hardened whorls and ridges. "A mercenary."

"I have to pay the bills somehow," Silva suggested archly. "We can't all rely on gambling to make a decent living." 

"You don't gamble?"

"No. I was never particularly interested in games of chance. I prefer advance planning. Luck is a fickle ally."

James snorted, but didn't answer, curling his arms over Silva's shoulders and nuzzling down his spine, his eyes fluttering closed, and the lull was rather pleasant after all, Silva conceded, as warm breath tickled over his skin. The best laid plans could always be reworked.

III.

There was a bitterness in Silva sometimes that James sensed was merely a cover for a depth of unresolved, insane hatred, a violent festering beast of resentment and anger and grief, bone deep and razor sharp that had poisoned the very edges of Silva's soul. He caught a glimpse of it now and then, especially whenever MI6 was brought up; he could see it in the widening flare of Silva's pupils and the curl of his mouth, the tension in his long fingers.

Whatever it had been, whatever betrayal or punishment that M had meted out on Silva, it had twisted the superbly trained beast within him into a ravening, maddened monster beyond even James' own recognition, something hungry for vengeance and blood, cheated of a dignified death and most of the comforts of its remaining life. The chaos it drew around it was merely symptomatic of its full corruption, as was the manic insanity of its pull; whoever and whatever Raoul Silva had once been, he was not that man or agent any longer. 

James understood this after only a handful of days of playing house with Silva, and only a month or so ago, he wouldn't have hesitated to put a bullet through Silva's skull. It would, in its own way, have been kindness. But the beast within James was in itself changing, and curiosity and inevitability stayed James' instinct for blood where logic called for it, and he waited, biding his time. 

They were on a yacht, miles from Fethiye, the sun warm and comforting over the deck, Silva on his laptop, James watching the twisting foam from the sea. Silva hadn't said where they were going, and James had been incurious. Whether he was in Istanbul, or New York, Iraq, Monaco, it mattered little. Only London remained remote and unresolved, forbidding and accusing.

If he could, he would never return-

"If I told you that I had a plan to kill Her," Silva said absently, cutting through James' bleak thoughts as mildly as though he was discussing the weather, "Would you shoot me?" 

"Sometimes it's tempting," James replied, deliberately playful, though he didn't look up, the beast within him sniffing at the edges of his training, the battered remnants of his conscience. 

M had been a constant figure in his life, near maternal, often merciless; there was often no love lost between them, and yet - and yet she seemed inexorable, immortal, almost, a fixture of snapping, snarling authority that had always eventually bent him to her will. He couldn't imagine her death any more than he could visualize the world ending. She had broken him - broken them both - but he had no real anger against her; it was a tangled weave of bindings that had always cleaved him to her will, from training and habit and maybe something as close to affection as his killer's heart could get to.

He didn't want her dead. 

"James, James," Silva murmured lazily, with the huffing, near silent laughter that reminded James of a hyena on the prowl, edged with a thirsty sort of madness. "She ruined you too."

"It was within her rights to make that call."

"Hn," Silva hummed, distracted, and James closed his eyes, let the sun flare red and bright behind the lids.

He'd gotten off lightly, compared to Silva; his aim would never be the same and it felt as though he had aged ten years over the past few weeks, but he was still, mostly, alive. James tried to imagine what it would be like to survive like Silva had, to have most of his humanity flayed away from him over the course of months of torture, and then have his sanity and the rest of him boiled down and recast. To have to live with constant pain for the rest of his life, never to eat or drink normally again. It was a miracle that Silva had survived, but in James' experience, the devil often worked in devious ways. 

"Let her go," James said finally, rolling over onto his back. "You're still alive. If you go after her, that won't last very long."

Silva glanced at him then, if briefly, the madness bright and hungry in his eyes, and James revised his thought even before the devil shook its token into that huffing, quiet hyena laughter. Silva wasn't alive, not the way humanity would count it; he was physically functional, if barely, with motor control, but the mind that drove the patchwork shell was gone. The monster that remained would only seek a certain sort of chaos, the type that could end only in the way that James had once been licensed to mete. 

"If our places had been changed," Silva asked, with only a distant flavour of curiosity in his tone, "Would you let things go?"

"I am in your place, and I have. We are the same," James lied, because sometimes lies wrought better cages than the truth ever would, "Let her go."

"There's a certain simplicity to you," Silva made a tutting sound, even as he went back to typing at his laptop. "I'm still not sure whether I like it."

James said nothing - he'd seen Silva shoot a deckhand only hours ago, just for being too slow to get out of their way, and even though Silva had handed him a Walther before they had boarded the yacht, with an ironic flourish, he'd left it below decks. Eventually, Silva closed his laptop with a snap, when James was watching the clouds again, and set it down beside the deckchair, uncurling to his feet and stretching luxuriously.

That hungry madness was still in Silva's smile and in the mayhem in his eyes when Silva straddled him and rolled his hips, and the blood that the monster had shed this morning wasn't going to be enough. James smiled thinly and bared his teeth, thrust his tongue deep into the sterile taste of Silva's mouth as their lips sealed tight, their hands fumbling at each others' belts and pants, urgent and rough.

James stiffened when Silva squeezed his cock, dry and rough, before tearing open a condom packet from his jacket with his teeth, rolling the latex onto James' cock, then grinning at James' blink as he sucked his own fingers into his mouth to slick them up. Growling, James twisted one hand into Silva's now-annoyingly bottle-blonde hair, and curled the other against Silva's wrist and pulled, wrapping his lips over roughened digits instead, sucking, rasping his teeth over the skin until the wildness in Silva's eyes darkened to freefall.

Silva was lazy with prep, but James didn't bother to point it out; a man who lived with pain as a constant companion would know his own limits. James curled his hands tight over Silva's hips, over the loudly patterned shirt, and forced himself to keep still, anyway, his breath hissing out from clenched teeth, his back coiled over the plastic slats of the deckchair. Silva's eyes unfocused as he sank himself down, his teeth bared into a silent snarl of madness and agony and lust, his eyes fixed somewhere past James' ear, at the horizon, and _Christ_ but he was tight, the lubrication nowhere near enough. 

"Raoul," James pressed, panting, about to suggest that they try to find some manner of lube - this was possibly not going to be entirely pleasant for the both of them. Silva seemed to ignore him, at the start, then he blinked owlishly when James repeated himself, as if belatedly registering his name, and then he smiled instead, and kissed James hard, his mouth clamped closed, as he ground himself all the way hilted.

When they broke the deck chair, Silva started to laugh, a welling mockery of mirth that shook through his scarred and ravaged frame and touched his eyes with wildness again, like nails drawn tight over James' instincts, still riding James viciously against the fragments, teeth bared. James snarled, his voice liquid and alien to his own ears, as he rolled them over the shattered chair and braced himself on the deck, his brutal thrusts shoving Silva up against steel and wood and jagged plastic until Silva braced himself against the deck and shoved back against him. It didn't seem to take long before James could feel Silva's release shake through him, shatter his laughter into gasps, and he groaned and clawed bloody grooves down old burn tracks on Silva's arms, grinding deep.

Later, Silva chuckled softly as James rolled off him and blithely disposed of the used condom by tossing it into the sea. "Mind the environment, James."

"Mm." James tugged Silva up onto the undamaged deck chair and settled heavily beside him, ignoring the dangerous creaks that the chair made under their combined weight. Silva's face was pinched, his gaze distant, and James found himself adding, "Do you want me to fetch your pills?"

Silva glanced at him, as though in surprise, then he smiled thinly and turned away, back towards the horizon, sticky fingers curling over the dip of James' spine. "I want my laptop," he ordered, just as James was starting to doze off, and James snorted, wiping off his hands on Silva's shirt, ignoring the indignant growl, and got off the chair.

3.0.

It took Silva nearly four months to convince James to take up mercenary work, and even then, James absolutely refused to have anything to do with work that compromised MI6 interests. Still loyal to Her, then, despite Her ways. It was possible that he would have to dispose of James after all. Unfortunate.

And possibly necessary. Silva was off schedule by a month, and he was no longer in a full mood to trigger the endgame, not yet, when playing with James was still so very entertaining. He had thought that he would have tired of James by now; few men or women ever held his interest in bed - and it occurred to him that maybe this was the game that James was playing. 

One night, after he'd fucked James against the door of the Four Seasons suite, roughly enough for James' moans to echo down the corridor, no doubt, not caring whether they'd be caught or seen, then again on the bed, Silva took his pills as he settled against the large glass window, looking out over winking sea of lights that was Hong Kong. Tomorrow he would show James his little playground - or perhaps not. Perhaps never. He had a Sig Sauer on the table, beside his laptop, while James was unarmed, exhausted, and curled on the bed.

As he contemplated serendipity, James murmured, idly, "I know that you have the list."

A little startled, Silva frowned over at the bed, though he kept his hands on his lap. No need for the Sig Sauer yet. "Oh?"

"That NATO list," James clarified, though he didn't move. "You were behind the hit on our branch in Istanbul."

"Was I?" Silva drawled playfully, and this time, James snorted.

"I'm not hopeless with computers, Raoul. I took a look in yours yesterday, while you were taking that call. I've been watching you for weeks. Your password's not insurmountable."

Maybe he was getting a little old and careless. "And you haven't gone running back to Her? I'm surprised."

James shifted a little on the sheets, though his reply was calm, almost neutral. "I'm still enjoying death." 

No wariness there, only a statement of possibility, an _offer_. Silva knew now that he was sitting on a choice, between James and between the unresolved vendetta that he had organised against Her; to try to salve the rest of his days with the hunter in his bed or to pick up the pistol on his desk and turn his path another way. The fact that he had reached this point did not surprise him. The fact that he was hesitating, however, did.

James huffed, when Silva wavered, on the edge between vendetta and change, caught between the ghost of the man he had once been and the ghost of the weapon he could be, and he allowed a sharp smile to twist up his lips, setting his elbow against the desk and his palm against the edge of the jaw plate, unyielding under his skin. Eventually, he reached forward, watched James tense as he walked his fingers over the smooth barrel of the Sig Sauer, then snort as Silva closed the laptop instead of picking up the pistol, and pushed himself up and away from the desk.

**Author's Note:**

> I might get around to some of the other prompts in time. :)


End file.
